cracked air filter housing

[Erdrick]

So the other day I decided to take off my air filter housing and check out how the filter was doing. I should have known to quit when I couldn't get the damn thing off. I finally, with quite a lot of "persuasion" was able to get the housing off. The filter looked fairly dirty, at least dirtier than what I would expect from the low miles I put on the car over the last year. Anyways, I decided to get a new filter, and so started to re-assemble the housing. Turns out that it didn't want to be put back together again. I got frustrated, and then it happened. I was able to re-assemble it!!! Well, minus a couple pieces of plastic. I have changed air filters on so many cars that I can't count them all. Usually it is around a 5 minute process, tops. This took me an hour, and I ended up breaking the filter housing. Thank you very much Mitsubishi engineers.

Anyways, herein lies my problem I have a small crack (half inch by half inch maybe) on the side of the filter housing box. It had to happen on the wrong side, ie, the side of the filter where the clean air is supposed to be. I thought about taping it to stop any contaminants from being sucked in, but decided that my problem would be severely amplified if said tape got sucked into the intake. Ouch... So, I am currently driving the car with the filter housing having a small opening in it.

Should I be worried about this? Is there anything I should do about it... or just shrug it off? I will only be driving the car for another six or seven months, and it will probably only see another 3,000 miles during that time frame.

I probably AM going to end up changing the filter, but since my company pays for all of my car costs, next time I will leave it to the pros. Haha.. can't believe I am going to have to rely on someone else to drop in an air intake filter. Remind me to never drive another Mitsubishi EVER again. Haha...